generally familiar with the project but in case you're not just a little bit of background you know the idea of a community pass through belmont has been discussed for many many years you know twenty twenty plus years  to sort of carry on that work and take it to to the next step one of our important charges was was to procure on behalf of the town a consultant to conduct this feasibility  study we ended up with with par and we're very happy to have them and part of the part of the process that they described in their in their bid was a very robust public engagement process and that's what we're  engaged in now the and so the first meeting we had was really a kickoff the next two or four focused on two other sort of sections of the potential path and now we're we're on the eastern end which is the third of this sort of three section focused meetings so that's where we are with that i'll turn it over to  you very much for us it's great to see a lot of familiar faces tonight thank you all for coming out i'm going to just do a little bit a recap about items that we originally presented at the kickoff that are carrying through the entire guidance and purpose of the study that we're doing so our overall purpose and goal is to recommend a single preferred alternative for non motorized through town that serves both the town's residents as well as the overall mass central rail trail that is running about  hundred and four plus or minus miles across central massachusetts is that better ok this will go from the wall family line to the cambridge line and we using the c pac as russ had mentioned the community path advisory committees alignments as our base so the two boards over here to my right your left where the original c pac alignments and then we're building off of that as we go as far as the level of design and the extent that this feasibility study will carry to before the project jumps to preliminary design we are looking at an in alternatives analysis essentially in each area what are the different segments that are possible what do they look like what do they feel like for the user what are they like for other residents of the town what are the costs of them and then we're also looking at measures to weight those different alternative what items should we be considering such as property impacts environmental impacts as i mentioned cost user ability and friendliness to the user so these are the two things that we're basically charged with as we move forward with this process and we are here tonight to gain your input as we move through these different alternatives because we want to figure out from you if you feel like we've covered everything in for looking at all the possibilities and how we are then ranking in weighting those different alignments i'm to turn it over quickly to kathleen to discuss some of our public engagement amy for those of you who don't know my name is kathleen faster on the landscape architect on the team from k three landscape architecture and just such a slide back sorry about that appreciate everyone being here one of the big parts of our process is the public engagement plan so some of you were at the workshop can i have a show of hands who came to the first workshop excellent has anyone seen the workshop materials online very good so there's still some of you who have who weren't familiar with that and so i'm just going to very briefly go over the fact that a public plan has been developed it's part of the materials that are online for this project on the website and what's significant about it is that the town the c p s and our consulting group have all collaborated and decided that what the public's input level should be municipalities do public englishman at many different levels and as you can see appear this has been decided that it's a collaboration and what that means is that we want to hear y we want to understand fully understand what your input is we want to consider it thoroughly and what we're doing elop ing and we want to see see what can be reflected in our study of this as  mentioned this is a feasibility analysis so it's our job to look at every alternative that c packer has presented to us in an objective way and the way we rank and look at these things is going to be based on what your community what you all value and how you guide us in that measurement one thing we want to go over are your roles and responsibilities in the public engagements lots about what our roles is what the c is which is they're the ones who finally decide on what is the most feasible make the final recommendation are accepted and your role is to provide us with insight in a matter that reba promotes public respectful civil discourse so we want to hear everyone's opinion and we want to be very respectful if we have varying opinions to hear everybody out because our job is to listen to those last thing that i want to touch on for we keep going is our process and how we've been trying to reach out to everybody we started off with the kick off meeting which was also a workshop and we've provided the workshop materials on line for people to engage in that process even though they weren't at the workshop so if you haven't already feel free to go online and we keep getting that input regularly since then we've had to site walks one that covered the west end through to the downtown and one that covered the east end through to downtown and we're having a series our first series of meetings as we develop the preliminary designs which allow us to understand the path and what will be cost and or truth and analyze it so those meetings include one for the west section one for the central section tonight's meeting is for the east section and then we will have another meeting on december sixth correct seventh december  seventh that will talk about hot topics which we have a long list coming and we're going to keep on developing those so that we can have sort of a round up of what we've been hearing then we'll get into further analysis and they'll be another series very similar to this series repeated when we have some of our conclusions develop to bring back to you and to get your input again so we're happy that you're all here tonight we've got a lot to cover so bear with us and we hope to have a really great exchange of information towards the  end as i mentioned with the c pax alternatives our base this is just the map of the existing fleet pack i meant they came to us a sensually through the entire segment of town an option on the north side of the rail an option on the south side of the rail and a couple of additional spurs off of that as we continue to advance i'm not going to repeat anything we went over last week but i just want to give you a sense of where we left off at the end of last week's meeting that covered the central area of the project everything that comes out of the eastern and we'll need to connect to that so the biggest thing is the area right in downtown which was the fourth section we covered in the central area meeting and we had several options here so we could either be on the north side of the we could be on the south side of the rail we could transition from one side to the other so you're looking at a couple things here where we remained on the north side where we remained on the south side where we did a switch back to stay on the south side of the rail where we crossed the road to get on the concord out of where we use the underpass to go from south to north and that was a slow i know several people were at last week's meeting hopefully those that couldn't be here looked at some of the materials online so extending from the downtown area we begin with three segments on the eastern and on the north side of the tracks on the south side of the tracks and then along concord avenue that's the piece i'm going to start with now so if we are on the north side of the tracks the first thing we need to do is get past the bank and that has a pinch point it's a relatively short pinch point only about twenty five feet but in that space we are at our minimum offset to the rail based on is requirements and we are at a minimum path with so you're looking at a typical section here that shows the area adjacent to the bank building we have a fifteen foot offset from the rail and an eight foot path and as i mentioned that only for this short stretch so if we are on the north side of the rail we have our fourteen foot recommended with we make that pinch pass the bank and then we widen back out to our fourteen foot recommended if we are on the south side of the rail just east of the downtown area we need to get back past the floral shop in the post office and then four or five commercial buildings before we get into the area of the high school property so in that area we are also a little bit pinched right at the floral shop and the post office we have our fifteen foot offset and our recommended path with and then as we get east of the post office that is our greatest pinch that's where we need to go to a minimum offset and minimum path with to get past those commercial properties without impacting the existing parking now for anyone who was here at the last meeting near the housing authority we looked at ok well if we need to encroach on that parking lot how can we make it more efficient and replicate the spaces there really isn't that kind of room with these commercial properties just east of the post office the layouts of the parking spaces are already efficient they're already up to code size and there really isn't any additional space on those properties to put spaces where there aren't already spaces now so we are pinned down to that fifteen foot offset eight foot wide path small wall and then maintain the existing parking on those properties alternatively if we go down concord avenue which is the third option through the section we need to cross concrete avenue whether we're on the north side of the rail or we're on the south side of the rail we now need to cross concord ave to get to run along concord avenue so whether that be signalized we are looking at the possibility of around about on the north side that own needs to be studied as we get farther into pulmonary design will have to do some traffic analysis and see what makes the most sense if this is the option that prevails so i just wanted to put that out there so that is the area immediately near the downtown section the next thing we want to look at is the alexander avenue area and then after alexander  sorry i skipped ahead of myself a little bit so if we do get to concord avenue if we make that crossing with the intersection there it conquered then we run along concord avenue so the most cost effective thing to do  this could either be looked at is a temporary condition or is a long term condition but would be the least expense would be to take the parking lane and the bike lanes that are on concord ave now and switch them to put the parking lane adjacent to the traveling is and talk the bike lane over to the sidewalk so that gives anyone riding in the bike area more protection it gives them some buffer from the roadway and from the travel way of the moving vehicles you're adjacent to only the parking people going you know two to five miles an hour so that is the option shown here however if that happens it makes the crossings a little bit more complicated anywhere we have a cross walk in that scenario a person that's on the sidewalk now needs to cross the bike lane and terry refuge space near the parking area then cross the travel way to the median and then do the same thing on the other side so this is just kind of an aerial showing you cross the bike area you refuge in the parking you cross the travel you refuge in the median you cross the travel refuge cross so you're complicating that crossing that already feels a little bit cumbersome today and then these are just a couple street views from  national association that district that diagram what that what that feels like when you're in that space now we're going to talk about the alexander avenue underpass and then we'll talk about typical as that could run along this entire li all right thank you though has proposed a underpass or overpass at alexander avenue so we studied an overpass which you can go into more detail of those but to start off with one to talk about an underpass at that location and so in taking a look at the feasibility we need to do some design work to study what might be best here and get your input on it because then will cost it out and that will and then we'll wait the feasibility of that option so to start off with we're taking a look at coming along the north side of the tracks through the belmont citizens form and then moving  the hill from doth directions as well as coming in from alexander and coming slightly down to a very open space with retaining walls along the tracks so that this really becomes an open space in the middle here and then this is a shortened connection under the tracks here and then another open space at the other end that does not interfere with the football field or the baseball field on the high school property  these as this is a rendering of that from the coming from the east towards that space you can see the seating the walls are pushed back and there's signage bollards trying to make it feel like a very open space this is one of many ways this can be done so again tonight's the time to give input we've already started getting some so that we can then move forward with that im is going to talk about a couple of the ways that we can approach this alexander point before we leave the slide i will say we did think about an overpass i'm not showing anything here tonight for that mainly because where the rails are today alexander ad is already about seven feet lower than the rail in the high school property  actually nine feet lower than the rail so when an overpass needs to be twenty two and a half feet above the rail that would be an immense structure to try to take something that's already nine feet below the rail and elevate it to twenty two feet above we'd be building walls and switchbacks that are going thirty feet in the air off the high school property that is relatively unfeasible the underpass makes a lot more sense and this came from part of what we heard at the workshop in the on line question near where people essential he said they prefer an overpass if you're in an area where you're already above the rail and they prefer an underpass in an area where you're already below the rail so as kathleen said this is a visual from being on the path now i want to walk you through a couple more visuals for this alternative before we look at other options in this area so this is a viewpoint from alexander av if you are coming along alexander in you're now approaching the pa which we have depressed from both the east and the west and you're entering the underpass to go to the high school property that is this viewpoint this top view is from a second floor elevation in the homes along side that alexander underpass so essentially at this point the the path has been depressed so that it is fourteen and a half feet below the rails so the path is down here we put a wall along the edge of those properties to retain that path in order to structurally allow it to depress approaches the underpass so this is the viewpoint of the yard and then where the path would be behind  this is the next alternative that alternative to depress the path and simultaneously depress alexander and create the open space really only works if the path is on the north side of the rail so while we have other options of the path being on the south side and we have the option of the path being on conquered ave we had to make sure that we were looking at this alexander avenue connection with relation to those other locations of the path as well so the second one works with the path being on the south side of the rail on the high school property or along concord ave so what happens here is alexander avenue would stay at the grade that it is today this could also work if the is on the north side so essentially this option works with any of the running length options but it has one drawback and i want to kind of work our way through that so alexander out stays at the graded is today the path would be at that grade as well and as i mentioned that is only about seven feet below the rail but we need to be fourteen and a half so now we have to depress seven and a half feet so this is a proposed switchback it's a little bit easier to see in this view here so here would be the path if it's on the north side or it could be on the high school property down here or it could be on concord of and essentially what happens here is alexander ab stays a grade either uses a staircase to come down or uses the switchback which is the eighty eight compliant grade to descend down to the underpass this is a view from within that underpass you're starting to approach alexander av you see the stairs and from you in the switchback off to your right or left essential of the topography in that area is even so this could be on either side and then this is a view of being on the underpass so this is the path if it's over here here's alexander  there would be houses appear obviously that's a little hard to render everything in the model but this is the view of the ramp itself and then this is the underpass down here and then this is just a little area of what that what that space looks like so this is a couple more view points so we just want to show the comparison of the first option that we had the gives you that open and inviting space and feel and then what this perspective looks like so as you enter from the high school property and you start to come into this underpass directly in front of you is the staircase up to alexander av so you have a little bit of a little bit less perspective a little bit less open this a bit more of that boxed  feel and then on the out xander av side as i mentioned this is all level with the existing grade of alexander av so we feel like that's more visible so when we get down to the alternatives you'll see how we're comparing the two so this is an option as i mentioned that works if the path is on the north side if the path is on the south side or the path is on conquered the third option is if the path is either on the high school property or concord avenue this one does not work if the path is running along the north side of the rail it would be very similar to what the york city road underpass does if anyone's from million with that about a mile east to brighton street in cambridge along the minuteman pa past alewife it would depress from the high school property it would come under a short underpass and then it would rise again on the alexander av side so alexander avenue would have some walls to depress the path would not be on the north side of the rail it would come through the underpass and then rise on the high school side of the of the underpass so this is the view from the high school property so now you're starting to approach this you see the rise on the opposite side of alexandra it's a little bit difficult to see but you see daylight through the tunnel you're not looking at that staircase that there was in the previous option so those are the three alternatives we've come up with through this area that's the definition of what they could or couldn't work with with where the path could be running through this section from downtown to brighton street and then no matter what underpass option we pick we feel it's very important to make sure there is the connection the con so whether we're on the north side of the rail or the south side of the rail or for on concord have either make the connection from concord out of up to the north side of the rail or make the connection from the north side of the rail down the concord ave so that needs to traverse the high school property obviously we've shown the rendering here of what that path can look like without impacting the existing ball fields but for anyone who isn't already aware the property has been approved by m s p a to be renovated itself they will probably be starting their feasibility study in the spring and we'll be just a little bit behind us but are at a good point for us to interact with them and engage with them and make sure that whatever is happening on the high school property works cohesively with what we're trying to achieve for the path and the connection to the community so this is like i said the connection point and then it comes down a little bit east of the pool in the library in the music school but it gets people in the northern community down to those connections that are currently separated by the rail so now we want to look at the longer typical sections or running lengths of this path as i mentioned the c pack previously had three options be on the north side of the rail be on the south side of the rail or b along concord ave we've added into the mix two more alternatives so we are now carrying five running length typical sections through there and walk through each one of those so the first one is if we are on the north side of the rail once we get past that pinch at the bank that i mentioned we enter the belmont citizens form property which for anyone who isn't aware directly adjacent to the rail there's about a twenty five to thirty foot m b t a property and then adjacent to that is another thirty five to forty foot parcel that is owned by the belmont citizens form so we would be on a combination of that m b t a and belmont citizens form land to to traverse through this area so once we get past the bank there is no longer a pinch we're now at least twenty five feet from the rail and we can put our minimum path length path with i'm sorry there are several options of what this could look like i'm sure anyone who is at the workshop or did the online questionnaire looked at all of the variety of edge treatments that could be applied which is showing a couple here one that keeps the path at the rail elevation and then provides a wall to make up the gray difference between what the rail elevation is and the properties as i mentioned that's like a six to seven foot height or grey difference and then there is one where the path comes down a little bit from the rail and then we make up the rest with a grading kind of like a one to one slope there with some more landscaping elements want to add a little bit to the conversation about this cross section the first one showing the wall does a couple of unique things it makes the trail experience between the two fence borders a very open flat zone it also allows a trail to rise and fall just enough to handle storm water management and allow all the storm order to be managed up on that perch land the second alternative shows the preservation of the existing wooded slope which is would be lost if you build the wall and make all that land hire putting a fence on top of it so those are two key differences between these two approaches what the buffer on each edge of these are can vary in each of those two but i think just the basic cross section that we're showing is an essential difference that we'd want some input and feedback  as we head farther east once we get close to brighton st there's a point where the belmont citizens form land ends and there's a property owned by french mahoney right at the brighton street intersection that we would have to get past now that is another pinch point on the side of the rail that building is currently just over twenty three feet off the rail about twenty three and a half feet so as i mentioned n b c is requiring a minimum fifteen foot offset so that gives us our fifteen foot offset to the rail and an eight and a half foot path if we are running at grade up against the building face and that still needs to have a separation to the rail so this is what the section looks like if we continue north and stay at grade as we get into this intersection will cover options later of well what if we're not agreed in will tell you all about that but just so you know there is this pinch point here where this building is the closest to the rail of anything running along that north side other than the banks of the bank is a pinch on the west and the french mahoney building is a pinch on the east and on the south side of the rail we have our twenty five foot offset in our fourteen foot wide path as we run across the high school property so this is the area where there is the existing drive behind the high school building so this represents the back edge of the existing high school building as i mentioned that is slated to move as that property continues to be reconstructed the building may not be that far back maybe someone in the same position may build off the existing footprint we don't know so we're just kind of showing right now what the existing is we feel like that is the worst case scenario if anything the building may be farther away from the path so we have our fourteen foot wide path we maintain the drive aisle and here is the existing high school just past the building then we go past the back side of the tennis courts again we have a twenty five foot  our fourteen foot wide path and these are the existing tennis courts off to your a inside as you head east down again the south side of the rail has a pinch as we approach brighton street the building that i believe houses a couple of different things the one that sticks out to me the most is always the crate escapes i'm going to call it the crate escape building as we come by the crate is ski building we don't even have twenty three feet so our fifteen foot offset our eight foot path does not fit on the south side of the rail without some impact to that structure it's been our understanding as we've talked with the town in the c p a see that part of the building is currently on occupied so there may be ability to impact that building and not lose any of the current function that it has so we have shown here if we are going to hit the building there's no point in trying to maintain just our eight foot path let's go back to our recommended fourteen foot wide path so we're showing on th side fifteen feet to the rail and then our recommended fourteen foot wide path with impact to the structure and you can see the bulk of this building runs that this distance from the rail and then it has a jump out so we would have impacted this hundred plus or minus full length just out to that structure so those are two of the options that see pac brought to us this is the third one that we've added as we've learned that the m s b is going to be re developing the high school property is there a way that we could be on that campus or interbreed with the high school campus instead of running right along the south side of the rail at the back of the high school building so this is  preliminary we have no idea what this high school property is actually gonna look like we just tried to take the existing ice skating rink field's building size in parking lot size and replicate them without impacts to the historic building or the pond so this is just a reconfiguration of what that may look like in the future and we're showing that the path could me enter through that and be very visible and have great connection to congress avenue that's ok so this is approximately where out xander ad is so with the underpass we were showing with a small circle will still fit here and that's where it would come out to the high school property if if it develops this way as i mentioned we have no idea how this property is going to continue to develop but we want to continue to follow its progress and try to make sure that we have coordination with that redevelopment the other alternative  be on conquered avenue and like i said there are existing bike lanes there so a very minimal effort we could switch the parking in the bike lane and protect it but we're trying to envision is there more we could do with that space and i think there's plenty more we could do with that space so the right away of concord avenue right now from back of sidewalk tobacco sidewalk is thirty thirty three seventy one it's like seventy six feet from back a sidewalk tobacco sidewalk and it currently has to travel lanes into parking lanes that only need thirty eight feet so thirty eight feet of that space needs to have vehicles on it to accommodate the on street parking in the two lanes worth of travel the rest of it could be repurposed so what we're showing here is a cross section that puts keeps the existing sidewalk on the south side which is already relatively wide puts the parking lane the eastbound traveling the westbound traveling in the west parking lane and that comes it's a little hard to see in this aerial but this space right here is the existing median that runs down the center so that parking lane takes up the with from the sidewalk to the north side of the existing median and that leaves us and a minimum thirty three feet to work with so there are a couple of things we can do there this image shows we've heard from a lot of people that they think it would be great if we had dedicated bike area and a separate area for walkers and joggers are people that aren't moving it quite the same pace so there's a possibility to fit that here within that thirty three feet let's keep like i said parking travel travel parking put in a five foot separation have the bike space put in a little more of a buffer and then have the slower moving or pedestrian travel that is one option thinking even a little bit grander we could turn this into a linear park in  walk through what the space could look like thank you amy so as amy was showing we're trying to come up with different ways of looking at some of these spaces and alternatives as you move through them and the belmont high school property that showed a vision of what might happen and so these images that we have here for concord have also show a vision of what might happen so the first thing that we're seeing is starting down at the downtown underpass here and utilizing that same amount of space that amy described before as being utilized for sort of the faster moving bicycle lane and then the slower moving walk walkers but to create it more as a linear park where within that thirty foot thirty three foot space you had the fourteen foot multiuse path meandering through a green space in this first stretch between the underpass a downtown and where the fields begin at the high school there are many different driveways that this path would have to traverse and that's one of the key things to consider in any of the concord avel turn it is because we would want to think through how we could consolidate some of those driveways and help mitigate the the conflicts that are possible when they're crossing each other so it would require access management in this area so we will look at access management as one of the opportunities alternatively we could start in the downtown area use that switchback that was shown at the last meeting and start on the south side of the rail to get past those five or six properties and then come across the very western edge of the high school property to get to this right thank you amy and that's an important connection because that might help avoid those conflicts between the driveways and the bike the community path as we continue to move along here we are at the historic building in the football field just i do want to point out the parking that is slips off of concord up here is maintained and shown in that location through this section this is a major intersection at the pool and there's another major intersection with a football field is that leads down to more community schools we felt that this particular zone through here could really be create a unique space have different plantings have some major bicycles parking create some really significant crossings so that it's really a pause point in the vehicular movement and a major connection into the rest of the town to the south as we continue there would also be a major crossing at this which is now the exit drive at the high school and the gateway walls at the high school near the baseball field and then as  can continue along past the pond it would just be a larger green space and then ending or turning at that point which will go into more detail in a minute in a space that really acts as a gateway into belmont from the east and then transition back to the typical cross section or move up  s that she packed pull to get pulled together coming from concord would be to utilize underwood street and hidden sure to connect back up to brighton street and the existing path so what this  what this up here shows is a continuation from the linear park along concord of and out we really are looking at two options to come down under would one would be one that utilizes some of the green space here and stays away from the roadway itself and another option would be to to utilize to remove the existing bike lane on underwood and use that space to widen the sidewalk that would act as the path along the the west side of underwood heading back up towards the high school from underwood we would turn up pittenger and what we would be looking at doing a long head injury would be expanding that sidewalk along the north side if it injure the other alternative that we've considered through this stretch was not one that was originally identified by the pack but it is one that we think is an option that can be considered for establish some new connections especially in the windbreak neighborhood what we would be looking at would be coming from from alexander utilizing sherman street and then connecting to brighton street and moving down towards the existing path now what that does is it enables us to make what we consider to be a pretty significant connection to the existing elementary school and it provides another option on the north side of the tracks amy was pointing out there are a number of pinch points once you get towards brighton street with the french mahoney building and also the create escape building so this just provides another alternative to help avoid some of those pinch points and to provide that additional alternative that's north of the tracks so what we would be doing on what we would look to be doing on sherman street and brighton street would be utilizing some of that existing roadway space which is rather wide you have wide lanes and wide shoulders and really creating a larger sidewalk space that would serve as the the path through the that segment and then that brings us to brighton street so it brings street there are three alternatives that we're looking at to get from the west side of brain street into connecting to the existing path on the east side the first one that we're looking at is an act create alternative now what the accurate alternative does is it provides an option for any one of excuse me any one of the alignments whether you're on the north side of the tracks the south side of the tracks whether you're coming up from hit injure and to connect to the path it provides an alternative for each one of those to cross break in st so what that would involve it was looking at this example you would involve it would involve integrating the existing rail signal with a pedestrian signal they would have to operate together but it would enable somebody that's crossing the path to have a  signal that would allow them to cross brighton street and they could either cross here then up or cross the tracks here going across and then if you're on the north side obviously you would just be making this movement but the aggregate alternative provides a number of different options for connecting  any one of those alignments just to the west to the existing path and i just want to point out down here if we are on hinge or another option that we've looked at is actually utilizing this existing  n the west side here and widening the sidewalk as well the other two alternatives for crossing brighton street are elevated alternatives overpasses that go up and over braintree and connect  to the existing path so the first example that shown here is is one that connects the north side of the rail on both sides and what you notice here is this this elevated structure would have to be rather large and what amy pointed out is we have this pinch point at the french mahoney building so what we've heard from is that we have that fifteen foot required offset from the path to the rail but if we are elevated we can get away with a little bit less than fifteen foot feet so what we've looked at here is we're on the north side of the tracks we ramp up and we actually come inside that fifteen foot buffer but we're at an elevation of sixteen feet which we would be at to actually cross brain street so we would hold that elevation at sixteen feet and move all the way across the french mooney building across britain street and then that leads us to the point where we're connecting to the existing path so if we're connecting to the existing path at a high elevation we can go over the path but we have to provide some sort of of bumped out around to be able to go sneak back around underneath the overpass so what this what this image shows here is we're at an elevation of sixteen feet until this point we're at an elevation of ten feet at elevation of we have to have an elevation of at least ten feet for a path to go underneath so that's what this little snake around the ramp is showing how we can use that that space to to move around in underneath the overpass the other elevated option would be a south to north connection were to be on the south side of the rails on the west side of braintree moving to the north side of the rails in the existing path on the east side of brain again as amy previously pointed out we have this pinch point at the create escape so what this option does is it actually it would occupy some of the space of the existing building so we would be accurate elevating along the side of the  creative skate building and then we would be diagonally crossing simultaneously the rail the rail line and brake in street so for this option since we're crossing the rail line we have to be up at an elevation of twenty four feet line so this would be a taller structure but you'll notice it's also significantly shorter than the previous example which had to elevate early said to sneak around the french mahoney  building so similarly we would be we would cross brain street ramp down and then we would have to have another secondary path that snakes around to connect back at grade to brighton street so those are the examples that we have for  i'm going to very quickly discuss something first before we get into the matrix if we are running along concord avenue or the south side of the rail there's also opportunity to make a connection as we said on the west end of the high school property there's the same opportunity on the east end of the high school property so if you are along the south edge of the rail and you don't want to pinch or make this overpass then the alternative is to bump out to hit injured do what tim was showing the long hid have and then do the accurate crossing at street conversely if we are coming along the concord avenue park and then up the underwood park and then we do want to do the overpass say we want to maintain that separation from brighton street in the rail and we want a grade separated crossing of those two elements then we could come along from hit injure to the south side and make that aerial transition so on both ends of the high school property we have the ability to make links from the south side of the rail to concrete advice versa so now i know anyone who's been at the last couple meetings has already seen the next two or three slides but just a recap of what we got from the workshop and the online question here and how it has thus far impacted the matrix that we're using to evaluate these different alternatives so we asked you a series of forty to forty five questions about what you felt was most important do you think impacts to private properties of the most important do you think the experience and the environment the you that the user is going to be is the most important do you think the cost is the most important so those are the different things that we had asked and we want to continue to get input on those elements because whether or not certain items are waited more than others will be critical to how the different alignments flush out in the recommended or most feasible alternative so from the input we've received so far most things flushed as equivalently important people thought they were important but no individual thing rose to be this is the number one most critical there were two items that were in like a seventy five per cent this is very important to me let's consider this highly and they were community connections and a higher quality recreational experience so those are the two things from the original workshop in the online questionnaire that have risen a little bit higher than the others so what we have so far is a broad level five category comparison of these different alternatives we're looking at accessing connectivity so how direct is the path if you are trying to get from one side to the other what does it connect to you if you are a regular user if you're trying to go to the grocery store if you're trying to get to the pool if you're trying to get to the high school what kind of connections is it giving you to resources within the town those are under accessing connectivity calm environmental impacts capture what lens forests or mature trees as well as any historical property or structure property impacts are both residential private nonresidential in public we're trying to look at around of what are we impacting what properties are we on and what is being affected to what degree and expand on this one in a second sense of security and comfort is a little bit subjective it's how do we feel the experience is from a user perspective are we in an area where the user is safe and therefore more people are going to want to use it or are we in an area where you are subject to either remote location that could be a little bit less appealing or are you along a roadway that could be a little bit less appealing specially for people with small children except for a so that is that category and then relative cost as we mentioned we have not put dollars to anything yet we will be doing that after the meeting on december seventh but we're at least looking at things from the perspective of this will require extensive walls or structures or overpasses this runs relatively at grade this is just  restricting or the optional long conquered avenue where moving curb lines were reconstructing a roadway we're building a park obviously there's some cost element to that so now i said just a little bit more breakdown about property impacts and sense of security and how we rank those at least on the signal perspective we are going to continue to develop this matrix each of these five categories will probably have close to five subcategories like i said accessing connectivity what wind is that segment going through is something going more out of the way than it needs to be what are the connection points on the west and the east end of that segment and how favorable are those so if we're wrong concord out of we need to cross concord have in the downtown area does that make it more or less feasibility as far as access so from property impacts if we are hitting a private residential structure i e impact to someone's actual home that go to zero we didn't even give it a one two or three even though those release feasible feasible and most feasible if we have some impact to private property that is not hitting the residents so maybe where encroaching three feet onto a private property that has a one if we need to be on someone's property just to get the thing constructed but then ultimately the path is not in any way on their property that to two and if we're not touching anyone's property at all that's a three for sense of security there were two things that we thought made an area seem the least safe if something was in a remote area or in a hit in space we feel like that would make a lot of people not want to use it a lot of single women young women mothers except we've given that the lowest ranking if we are running alongside of a road where you could have interference with traffic or moving vehicles we think that's kind of a little bit above a remote location but is still somewhat of a drawback with your experience and your sense of security that's a two and if we are in an off road area that is not too far removed we've given that the highest ranking from a user perspective so for the first section where we're looking at the connection from downtown basically past are pinch points so on the north side it's a small pinch point on the south side it's a little bit longer of a pinch point but in this section we have three alternatives north side rail south side of rail congress avenue how do those flush out so looking at the original numbers the south side fell a little bit lower than the north side in concord ave but this was almost a wash these are all very similar in this area you have a little bit of a pinch you have an area where you're a little bit tighter so that sense of security goes down to some degree and then concord av should have a little bit of an ash trick because there are two options there are kind of as we start to move through this are we doing the low end concord out of option or are we doing the grander concord of option in the second area when we look at the alexander connection and how we're going to get neighborhoods on the north connect you to resources and neighborhoods on the south we looked at the depressed path we looked at the elevated path using the switchback structure and we looked at a street underpass similar to the york city's road underpass that just cuts queen across with minimal walls and then continues to use alexander out similar to how it operates today as you can see the street underpass rose to the top the only reason i put an  ash trick here is the cost of that is the least because it has the least walls the switchback has the intermediate level amount of walls and the depressed path has the most amount of walls you're depressing the path from both and you're basically building six walls versus the three for the switchback in the two very short ones for the street underpass however if the path is not here or here this option works with the path down here or a path meandering through then there's a little bit of a question in we're still trying to get clear answer on this from the state or from v c r does this component fall under the cost of this project or does it then become its own project if the path itself is not adjacent to the underpass than does the underpass become a separate entity we are pushing that it still makes a great connection and therefore i incorporated in the intent of what the path is trying to do but we're still chasing those answers a little bit from the state and from d c are the second was the depressed path with its openness an increased sense of security however like i said it's the greatest cost and then to be elevated with the switchback that sink to the bottom of the three options through that area as we look at the stretches as a whole we've now presented five alternatives north side of rail south side of rail meandering through a renovated high school campus running along concord av as a linear park or being in the wind brook neighborhood making the connection to the windbreak elementary school so as you have five alternatives here the concrete avenue linear park even though it is most likely the most expensive option has risen to the top the high school property again makes great connections has the least impacts to environmental existing tree space roadway and then these two again have an ashtray because being on the south side of the rail or be entering through the high school property are both on the high school so if there is another project that is developing the high school is the funding is the funding on them is it a shared so i think there may be some ability to lower the cost of those two options from the perspective of this project if they are somewhat absorbed by the m s b a redevelopment which will be reconstructing that entire property anyway and then finally when we get to brighton street the acrid crossing did rise to the top partially because it is the cheapest option by far the cheapest option however we think it has the least sense of security to be crossing the rail in the street at the same time  is makes the user feel very vulnerable it's an interesting crossing now we would enhance it to the extent possible with highly visible pavement markings pushing those stop bars back signalize ing is to mention but you are still crossing the street in crossing the rail at essentially the same intersection the north side overpass fell to the bottom of these options and the south to north wasn't far behind the agri so just kind looking at that there so now i've kind of pointed out what rose to the top as we've gone but in the first section north side a railing conquered average tide the straight across underpass was the highest for the alexander connection conquered ave rose to the top for the section as a whole for the running length of each typical and then the x rayed crossing one now from the south to north transition by a little bit at the brain of intersection that is how things are ranked based on how the matrix is right now based on the input we've received so far on importance of different elements we have heard at the last two meetings that if anything may start to rise or be weighted higher it should be this sense of security comfort in user perspective we would really like input tonight on a couple of things on what the path should continue to look like is it traverses these spaces and is there do you feel that the way those things have ranked so far do they fit what you perceive as the as the experience of the past and where it goes the connections it's making and its impacts or do you feel like there's something that should be weighted differently that would possibly lend itself to a different recommendation and then kathleen would also love to hear if there are any more points that you think should access the path is there a nother elementary school south of here worth the middle school over here or there are other connections that should be made that could contend that could continue to build off of this as spurs we're looking at this path as the backbone of what belmont is starting to put in place as a bike network and we're trying to ensure that there are other connections to that so in the previous section a path along midland that comes out to town field would be a great connection even if it's not where the path goes this area up sherman to the elementary school may be a great connection even if it's not where the path goes and may actually went itself to some safe routes to school funding so those are different things we want to hear from i may be getting a little bit ahead of myself we can basically open it up to discussion at this point we want to start hearing from you about the different alignments we've presented thank you very much for listening to us for this long and start to tell us what you think so you're a lumping that so we had what your store you were describing as we had under access and connectivity if it is along the belmont citizens farm property there's no access to it for that stretch and that's the point that you're making but you think that that lends itself to the safety and security so this is being recorded by belmont media if people have questions and don't mind if you could use the other microphone that's at your right that would be appreciated just from their perspective if you don't feel like getting up and going over there i can repeat the questions as they're presented to us just so it's all in the recording of the meeting in the downtown area you're mentioning because this was the last meeting that we had and if you want to go on the web site there's a lot more detail but very quickly i can jump back to that area yes so the gentleman asked if we are going to run along concord avenue how do we get there from the downtown area on the west side of the downtown bridge if we're on the north side of the rail or the south side how are we getting through that impasse that to be in the options that we're showing along concord avenue so as i mentioned if we're on the north side of the rail we could stay up here for this area by the station we would then depress through what we've drawn up is a large parking space and i really hope you go on the website and look at the meeting materials there are a lot of renderings and what that could look like there would be a park space here the path would descend through the park this underpass has tim do you remember the with of that i remember it was about forty feet of roadway space and it only needs to be about twenty six feet of roadway space even giving it generous shoulders so we're going to take about fifteen feet away from the paved area under here and wide in th revolution if you do wide in the sidewalk to about a twenty foot with and come under and then we would have to cross concord have so this intersection would have to be signalized with the volume that this path is proposing to have we can't just have that number of people crossing freely they would need to have some sort of control so we would have to look at how this could become signalized to get people across this intersection and then continue down concrete of alternative as i mentioned alternatively if we are on either the north side or the south side we could build a switch back here similar to what i showed near the alexander av for anyone who wasn't aware of a switch back you start to incline one way you double back on yourself you incline again you double back you incline until you make up the grade difference that you make that you need to so this was a double switch back that then comes up to the south side of the rail we would create a new structure adjacent to the existing structure because this is a historic structure so we don't want to impact it we would then run along the south side run along the south side of the rail to the west end of the high school property and then come down to concord so we would avoid both this intersection and having to do the access management here we would be at the back side of their properties but that is a fifteen foot offset to the rail and you're at level grade to the rail so those are the options for how we get to abbott conquered out of is an option yeah let me say that that's not tremendously convincing and it's certainly true that there there is no way on earth that you're going to narrow the passage under the railroad bridge it's just not going to happen it's three lanes of traffic and it needs to be three lanes of traffic and it's just a fantasy to think you do anything else but that crossing is the critical issue i think in this because it's the most dangerous intersection in belmont not from the point of view of car accidents there are lots of them but they're all fender benders but you put pedestrians and bicyclists in there and somebody is dead you know what would be a fender bender it's all you know eight miles an hour or something but would be would be a fender bender if between two cars kills a cyclist so that is a very critical issue for for for your planning for safety for above all for safety  as far as i know it's just this is going to be a challenge to you i'm sure but just from the history i've only lived here twenty years but there are people who've lived here forty years and the that intersection that the traffic at that intersection has they've tried many many many things and they've tried you know having a cop there that actually made it worse i mean i live so where the traffic lines up to go through that and and there's an incredible amount of traffic and it's only going to get worse because there's development coming and and so you know you can feel challenge to nabeel come up with something but many things have been tried over the past forty years and nothing has worked as well as what happens right now which is kind of a free for all i actually wanted to see can you repeat oh i said i said nothing that has been tried is my understanding i've only lived here twenty years but my understanding is that over the past forty years or more many things have been tried and nothing has worked important close your eyes has got he said no i don't do that i don't was i wanted to ask actually about the alexander have tunnel underpass which i think is a fabulous idea and would have many many advantages for the town even addition to everything but i wanted to ask how long you envision it because that was one of the things that you didn't mention the length of those retention areas you're talking about will how long are you in the tunnel because it's a critical safety issue a short time at least ok wonderfully safe a long tunnel not so good the underpass is less than fifty feet less than less than fifty feet you know so the rail itself is about twenty bta maintains an existing drive on the north side of the rail that we have to stay under and then there's a little bit of a buffer on each side so we're looking at that and if you go back to some of these renderings i mean these give you an idea of what that looks like you know i thought the one with the stairs was terrible but yeah but no if we don't have the stairs this is the view if we're in either the first option we mentioned with the depressed path or if we're in the third option where it's just the straight shot up alexander this is essentially what it looks like this is the length of the tunnel this is all true to scale and you see on the other side the rise of alexander avenue so you're saying you can see through in either case yes but how much actually are you in the tunnel not on the approach but are you got to is twenty feet thirty feet the actual tunnel box is a little under fifty feet kathleen's going to show you what space where i am to where tim is maybe a little further that's long and i don't see why it has to be that long and i would recommend you look every way that you can to making you know to making the box when you're actually under the tracks being a oh wider than under the tracks well m b t like i said also has their drive aisle and then we have to get the structure built so there's about a five foot buffer on each side so this to ten foot drive ten feet worth of buffer plus the twenty six foot with of the actual track so it's forty six feet it is we have the ability to widen it so our path is generally recommended at fourteen feet we're showing this in a twenty foot with so we're trying to make it wide to make it feel more open and more inviting if you want to compare it to something else the underpass at the existing downtown belmont center station it is too long is too long exactly and it should be shorter that i hope more than double the length of what this will be ok sounds good thank you the underpasses belmont center is only about seven feet wide so this would be almost three times as wide as that and it would be about half as  there is anyone familiar with this york city's road underpass york city road underpass in cambridge it's about a mile east of brighton if you follow the minuteman path it's going to mention i've been through that one and it's  easy very it would look very similar to that except that starts the level with the rail comes down a full fourteen feet and then comes back up a full fourteen feet so our length of depression would only be about half of what's there but the underpass itself would be very similar go ahead i have a couple questions and comments one i just i know that there was a lot of controversy discussion research etc around the town center project and so that's certainly reflecting the resistance to changing anything about the underpass that said i disagree slightly with sue in terms of widening the sidewalk there because there is accommodating a bike lane there currently and so if there were a way to you know similar to concord having cambridge if it were raised up so that cycles pedestrians were in that same space and i think people would feel safer and you could feed it to the other side of the tunnel which is something that's missing now from the center project the second point i wanted to contribute about the center project and what you do on that side is in the initial designs they looked at one of the proposals actually had a rotary on the conquered side at all times of day and i don't know the specifics on that maybe jeffrey wheeler maybe you were involved in those conversations i'm not sure but it's worth looking at if you have i was going to say we we are kind of dying to do a traffic study of that downtown area because right now with your free for all traffic moves at about a five to eight mile per hour pace that is typical of what's accommodated and around about so for anyone who was here last week we did bring up the topic of around about again it gives you a safer alternative to continue to go with the approximate speed you're operating at now i know there's resistance to it but we think it could be studied in more detail we're trying to find out if traffic volume counts in sync grown elsa's have been done yet or if it was just more of a hypothetical thought i don't know the information on that but it certainly there's a few plans early on that you can see and i know they were presented in public forum s i will say coming from that end of town it would be worth looking at the crossings that exist there because one of the problems when you're walking from town field is you have to know well in advance where to cross and that's at  you know there's a mid mid road crossing near the church near or you know just down from orchard street so that would having around about there i would certainly see as an improvement to getting those access to areas because the cross walks don't exist right now in several places the other question i had for you in terms of the acrid crossing brighton what what does that mean is it possible to have  raised a raised crosswalk there because i actually see the you know the infrastructure to protect cars from you know hitting the trains and transforming so forth as a benefit visually calls attention to you know a difficult zone so you know i'm not totally convinced that that's a bad place and that having it are great is a bad idea but but certainly within this entire area that we showed that would basically be the platform where if this is approaching you would just stay at sidewalk level and there would be a ramp up on each approach side for vehicles that is that is an option within that alternative thank you then let him speak because he's been thin and over there in the will come i have a few questions i want to get a better picture of what the switchback looks like for some of the folks that weren't here last week on where we are in the area near alexander average have enough with to make that the typical path with to make those sections fourteen feet wide in the downtown area there was a truncated amount of space just to the east of the belmont with it's just over thirty but yes actually got to ok and then in the area near alexander out we only had two areas of switchbacks so you're putting in fourteen foot with but that's twenty eight so it's similar in with ok  clarification on the bridge douglas of where it is on alexander of whether you go below whatever how far do you have to go down being a resident knowing that that is historically a flood zone so it's all right you know alexander consideration alexander av is approximately seven feet below the rail grade right now m b t is requiring three feet of cover our box is about a foot and a half thick that's four and a half plus we're trying to maintain a ten foot clearance inside our box so that adds up to fourteen and a half so from the elevation the alexander is at right now it has to come down seven and a half feet and i'm glad you brought that up we will be including within our cost what type of storm water management needs to be included in there it may be a sub pump system since we're looking at an underpass the rail is currently around elevation twenty six so once we get fourteen feet below that we're around elevation twelve somewhere in the ten to twelve pure elevation above sea level so we have acknowledged that there's going to be some storm water challenges to that in like i said i believe a sub pumps and system will probably be appropriate ok when you're crossing over brighton street this is a community path correct so you have people with carriages walking so you're going to have a with the said fourteen feet so there are some who want to get a visual of it yeah there are two different options if we are on the north side and we come along the french ammonia property even skimming down from the fifteen foot that m b t has asked for to a ten foot in our grade separated this can only be eleven feet wide and it's hard to make a structure flare midway so we would probably carry the eleven feet across its length so this is fully elevated for about seven hundred feet at on the levin foot with if we are on the south side as i said we have to hit this building anyway why not make it fourteen feet wide there's no point in taking five feet of a building when eight feet of the building gets us a better option so this one would be fourteen feet wide it would be our recommended path with similar to what's running to the west the existing path to the east is eleven feet so in the area once we ramp down this would narrow again from our fourteen feet to the existing eleven feet so you're up a little higher but you have more with in that and we have position length of these to all be compliant so none of them is excessively steep so you are in that running incline but you're at a low grade or slope pretty big for a long distance what happens when it snows what happens when it snows is a much bigger question for this path that the town in the maintenance and the operators have to answer there are some paths that only operate full function for nine months of the year and then they turn into cross country paths so they're still used as a recreational but they just let the snow accumulating on them and people use them as they are with snow on the ground  some towns of taking it upon themselves to plow their paths expect a fourteen foot with it would be eligible to get a plow up there that's not something i can answer right now but it is something we've thought about and we started to talk to the town about you know there are those different options and ultimately for the path as a whole it will need to be decided is there a play and i know it's in the early stages but as are playing for the operative time of this path you know is there a shot off time you know if it's going to be going on in general that got compiled right into that same conversation so from the workshop in the questionnaire we put out there we have tried to ask people who are going to be using the path what time of day do you plan on using it in the early morning like the five am to nine a kind your commuter window in the late morning so your everybody's at work i'm going to avoid that traffic and go to the grocery store now your nine to one your one to five and then five to nine pm so your commute back home plus you after work recreational users and there was a very even distribution of those four time frames so people want to be using this path before sun up and after sundown expression if it's open in the winter months so we have mentioned to the town you know it needs to be decided if the path will be later not that doesn't really affect us from a feasibility study because if the decision is to make it let then it's the same cost for the length of the path no matter where the path is so from a feasibility perspective it kind of flushes out but it is something that the town is starting to think about and we've got to figure out who's going to be maintaining this you mentioned a bunch of times on the matrix and help people have voted on it or what not you know i know a lot of people have i know a lot of people have it but you be in sherman street tonight how did that i mean i know people in german street that were texting me like i knew nothing about this already so how did that get out and if that's the case is there anything else that could be added in or taken out so everywhere along the way we've tried to look at what c pac brought to us and said well where are the most critical areas where we have an extreme pinch or an area that seems like it may not be feasible because we're hitting a residential like along a long pearson road in clark lane the fifteen foot offset of  the plus and the footpath hits three houses not even just where someone on someone's property for a couple of feet where in their home so either you have to move their house by their house so we said that's probably not going to become feasible so if we want to be on the south side of the rail or the north side of the rail where else can we go and part of what drove that as i mentioned are well what else is around that we can make a connection to that would be worthwhile for the path to go past so we tried to do that through all three sections in all three sections we had a couple of things that we added we i've mentioned this to the town planner there are now roads were looking at being on that we weren't looking at being on before so that word does need to get out whether it goes through the electric bill mailings or something to that effect they do not affect what was asked for in the workshop and that question here because those items dealt with what is most important so we are using what you've defined as being most support and to rank these different alternatives but it doesn't affect which alternatives have been presented does that make sense so i am final question and i know there's been some giggling and things like that but this does affect regardless of whatever it is it's going to affect somebodies house in some way you know there's going to be compromise on both sides we get that but i just want everyone to have respect for what you two are speaking or you know whatever how are you going to get how is this finally going to get passed is a going to be voted on by the selectmen is going to be voted on by you know we are going to take everything that we've developed and we're analyzing look at the path that is the most feasible and make that as a recommendation to the selectmen and as we said what becomes the most feasible from our assessment is based on that matrix so your input on how we should weigh in analyze that matrix is important after we make our recommendation to the board of selectmen the board of selectmen will pick the ultimate path location so they may agree with our recommendation they have the ability to override our recommendation so just to be perfectly clear if the board of selectmen say we like option a they're going to choose that and that's it and then the taxpayers pay for so i'm geoffrey wheeler on the town's senior planner so the issue of of what how to the next steps after this feasibility study as amy said they will take all this information boil it up call it down whatever and make a recommendation the selection is then up to the selectmen decide how they want to proceed they could to say thank you very much we're done let's talk about something else they can say hey you know what i like what you came up with let's go with that they can say no don't like what you did we want to come up we want do something different it's their decision after that if it if there is a decision to do something to build something it then we choir is going to design we have to design them we have to come up with the funding we may have to come back to town meeting to get funding vague but it's it's there's a lot of opportunities and a lot of different avenues that we can take because there's a lot of people that you know that i speak with aren't really familiar with this parent so would you be doing a favor just give because we're t v tell everybody what the website is the big go to yes please go to the website ok their website is with the community pap feasibility study it is i hope it's easily accessible yeah i don't know what i would suggest you do is ignore that go to the no no no because it's so long you go to the town's home page on the right hand side is a link to reports and presentations click that that will provide a list of various different projects that are going on in town  there would be financial documents a whole bunch of stuff scroll about two thirds of the way down and you will see kimmie path implementation advisory committee right underneath that is a link it says community path feasibility study click on that and that will bring you directly to the page on that page you will find announcements of upcoming meetings for example if you look in there now you will announcement of this meeting you also find amounts of in december seventh meeting after that is the questionnaire slash survey whatever you want to call it the preference for from the workshop if you want to answer that underneath presentation either the power point the boards or whatever of other at that point that sort of documentation at the moment but that were presented at each of the meetings by sections so the central section the presentation the powerpoint presentation and the boards are listed the western section the powerpoint presentation and the boards are also up online if you're having problems accessing this you can always email me my e mail you can find that on the town so but i'm not going to give it you're right no other thing other issue is the other question that always comes up of people want to make comments for whatever reason they're not comfortable maybe making comment now or you go home and you're breaking the leaves that time year and year three pondering what you've just heard and you're like wait a minute i don't get this oh wait a minute did they think about this please send me comments i've gotten about five comments already those automatically would guard less of what they say gets and get forwarded sorry get forwarded to amy and documented anything has to go through me do not reach out directly to amy kathleen or tim they've been instructed that it has to come through me it comes through me i will make sure that it gets forward as i said we've got about five comments already so please continue to send them if you have them e mail please that's what i should say wait a minute sorry let me take my e mails to preferred i understand that there are people that don't do e mail if you send me a letter i will scan it and send it along i'm kathleen was also pointing out we do have are in common forms here as well so if anyone's here that doesn't feel like standing up and speaking you can give us written comment the c evening as well so get back to questions so if there were bridges in this path are they going to be strong enough to accommodate a sidewalk plow because i'm referencing a lot of this to the minute man and i believe arlington uses a truck and i think lexington at one time and may still be using a sidewalk plow it's a little bit of a design detail that will come with the next phase but i have asked our structural group and they can maintain the foot and a half thickness of the structure that they've been telling me to use if a single truck is on it at a time obviously we don't want multiple vehicles on a time but if there was a single plow or if there happens to be an emergency and we need to get an ambulance across generally we can support the weight of that within the structural thickness that they've been having me use for all of our clearances and i was wondering also when i look at what's planned i often go and compare with what i've already seen on the minuteman path partly and i realize that that's old and built to previous standards but it is also extremely successful and it's my understanding i could have remembered this wrongly that it is i know it's on lit at night and i believe that it is officially closed after sunset with the understanding that nobody cares as long as you behave yourself but the fact that it's closed means that there doesn't have to be a whole lot of ceremony about kicking you off the path if you're knot it's run by the federal government that's way out isn't it minimum park the minimum until no there's a whole section of you talking about the license and i believe i just want to clarify what you were just discussing  but i but that's my understanding into that effect as we've discussed with the safety in the fire it's we can put ours on the path but at the same time anywhere it is running in a structure you can access it it's not gated so to some extent those hours are self it here so you're supposed to adhere to the hours but there's no way for us to officially block off the path if you will in many of the segments that it would be running through and your safety thing to me it seems to really overweight remoteness and underweight things like roadway crossings and again referencing it back to existing pads either the minuteman or the new one connecting belmont to el wife one of the things that you learn to look out for when you're riding your bike on them is across children learning to ride their bikes and so comfort metric you know one comfort test is would you expect to see children training wheels or kick bikes learning to ride their bikes and i don't think that's possible at all in any place where there are sidewalk i mean driveways cutting it and in my daily use of roads the last near miss i had was at a driveway i've never been hit at a driveway but the last near miss which was a good one was at a driveway and probably every single day i'll have someone pop out of a side street gracelessly enough that i you know that i give him a sin i've carried a camera too so i feedback so you are looking at any offered alternative as being more comfortable than an on road so what i had is one in two you're looking at reversing basically a remote i had as a one and along side a road was remote doesn't bother me on road remote so we've heard this like well fifty fifty we don't want people who aren't bothered by remote a lot of people are those as a mom with small children i don't like being on the road but i also don't like things like other successful trails and see how remote they are yet remain successful that absolutely i mean some of the other implode on that is the input that we've gotten from fire and safety and how distant they want to be from access points to the trail as well so all of that's been taken into consideration oh so i live in the wind brook neighborhood just a hop skip and a jump  alexander of crossing when we bought our house our daughter was one year old and we said we have to worry about crossing those tracks to put us of believe in still live here that well thirty four years later we're still here she's gone you know married in a way but i strongly believe in the concept of having access to the school fields to the library and so on and so forth but i also have serious concerns about parking in the neighborhood because a wife is not that far away and it's either seven or eight dollars a day i know of a person who are really comes to the neighborhood parks his car takes his bike out and rides to a wife now without a trail so what i want to understand is how do you manage that for a neighborhood so that you're not be sieged on weekdays by commuters and then on weekends by people who want to be able to enjoy the the trail the other thing is what the gentleman said about the flooding i think that actually that the crossing at alexander of is probably at sea level so if you can down fourteen seven more feet you know we've lived there through some hundred year storm advance it's it's pretty frightening  there's parts of arlington where the roads flood they sometimes have to bring in you know like a fire truck or something to get people out i know baker street and that area years ago one of the flood events that we had they actually had to bring the front end loaders and bring people out of their houses in front end loaders so that you know that's that's a real serious concern for you to to for you to analyze and really not just take take into effect a normal storm but one of these hundred year flood events that we at one point we had three of them in like five years the other thing is that i know from a neighbor who happens to live right at the crossing that when the n p t i was working on the tracks there was often a detail officer there and people would literally drop their kids off and have them cross the tracks which they're not supposed to do so there's going to you're going to end up having a management issue for that too if you if you put in a crossing the adding this should not be done in a way that it seriously impacts the ability for the people in that neighborhood to keep their lives somewhat normal i mean everybody they will benefit as well but they shouldn't all of a sudden be dreading the fact that the weather's getting warm and people will be disrespectful in park and so on and so forth so do you analyze these kinds of things as you look at options and as you look at other programs is yes as we continue to develop the matrix we will be looking at impacts t properties in addition to just are we physically on your lawn but how is your property affected by where the path could go so from what you're saying is sounds if not to put words in your mouth and you can come from this or not but it sounds like you would prefer to have the underpass just be an underpass and not have the path be right there well it is logical to me that there be access from the chanting road side of of  the the properties of the heights to the high school i mean it's totally logical but it needs to be done in a way that you know in arlington we have a with a bike path in arlington center there is a municipal parking lot there so i go over there and i see people but there's no municipal parking lot in the windbreak neighborhood you know how do you do you do you end up having to have two hours parking up and down and how far to you and those are things we've started to discuss with the town so do we add curbs along those properties so people can be parking on your yard and destroying your yard they have to make sure they stay within the road do you implement any kind of restricted parking or parking bans within that neighborhood we get the sense that most of the wind brooke neighborhood would either walk or bike to the path and wouldn't necessarily need to drive but we are also looking at we had a discussion slide about connections and that gets incorporated within the design we plan on doing sorry i'm trying to find it i'm not trying to but we had a slide about connections so they're not just where do you want to make your connection but where do you envision connections happening and how do we come to things like parking so do we need a small space allotted for parking and how do people get to it is it just at the end of that segment does it need to be somewhere close to the middle so i know a woman who's in her eighty's now and she said when they built the high school they promised they being town officials that there would be a connection from the wynberg neighborhood to the high school property whether that was sort of an urban legend of its time i don't know but here it is like i said we've been here since eighty two and you know sadly we were we've been here when kids have been killed on the that the one dollar of the community path is not on the backs of that that neighborhood thank you thank you i mean i have a couple of questions i'll try and go west to east a bomb on center you talked about going behind the properties and then coming out to concord how many curb cuts would you avoid and how many would still remain if you so if we do so right now there's the guard the flower shop there's the post office then as i mentioned there are a couple of commercial properties some of them have more than one driveway right now as they sneak around the backs of their properties so they're probably in here are about nine driveways if we did what we're talking about if we came along concord avenue we feel like there needs to be some what we call it axis management basically you start to consolidate driveways so this driveway right now is only one way but it is wide enough of an aisle to be two way and it reaches out to this part and it reaches out to this part so take away this driveway take away this drive and just have this one so what we've started to envision there and we may lay this out more by the december seventh meeting we think that could be truncated from nine to a maximum of three so you may have three it is still a relatively short stretch but it's a great over what's here now and we would make sure they are very visible and you have clear visibility of people crossing the alternative just pointed out one more time is to come along the back sides of those buildings to avoid all of those nine access points and then come through the high school property and make your connection it's just off this to where the pool is and you could come out here on to concord and then you only cross the high school connection to alexander which is really just more path it's not even a drive iow the exit from the high school and then you come up underwood so this would take you down to one vehicle crossing if you don't come out until you're on the west end of a high school property or just echo what david said earlier if you if you go a mile down the road on the south side of concord in cambridge right that we must and as we mentioned we feel like this this can't happen unless there's at least a good effort to maintain some access management through here i think if there was three driveways that still three too many introducing pedestrians and bicycles through that already congested area i think would be a dangerous mistake going back to that alexander underpass the opens base that you talked about i think that's a good piece of civil engineering i think it's a bad piece of social engineering the channing road residents have legitimate privacy concerns and i think that that idea rubs there like creating  space that invites people to linger in their backyard is it disrespectful of their concern so we appreciate that input i'm not the most sympathetic to the about hers but i think that we need to i think we need to acknowledge there are legitimate concerns and not talk about alexander as or the north  path without also talking about how we're going to mitigate those concerns and i ask you a question before we go away so i know we have training a resident here where is your preference is this more appealing then the version where the path doesn't depress stays level and then you have to build the switchback i asking in general every everybody  but you've had deaths that the rail crossing i don't mind you responding because we're in handling this conversation but if you just just in response to the question and just a different difference of opinion with bruce fully respect his and all the neighbors i do support a tunnel through i think it really does connect the the two neighborhoods which i think is a key ingredient to the success of of the path i don't like with regards to what my preference is i think from what the prior gentleman said the least obtrusive to the neighbors is critical i don't care if it if it is the most glamorous or not it shouldn't be a consideration it should be privacy safety drainage all the concerns the legitimate concerns that they're raising around their properties their houses that needs to be the key factor in path in the tunnel but i think the pass through offers a huge amount of connection of the community in the neighborhoods and what's going to be a fabulous new public school as well we've got to remember that that there's a whole new plan when you combine of the high end we can connect two communities and to that to build on your point whether the tunnel whether the path is along the belmont citizens form property or not if the tunnel is built i think your concern about drop offs and pick ups  you mind just speaking like just because they're recording everything we're just trying to get everything on record thousand dollars that it cost to get through a tunnel that goes under that switch so when people are talking out we can just do a time oh it's great it's actually we already went through this a year ago we went through with jeff saying it's easy to come through your neighborhood as i'm going to dig a tunnel it's not that easy so people's perceptions out to be reality and that this is a very difficult thing  of excavation we're not quite as deep as we thought we were going to need to be and we've talk with them about how installation could work they are open to what's called the cotton cover so you excavate what about in the land  donated the money it was a donated do we have to buy that at a profit do you know that i mean that wind is privately own it's not it's my understanding that it was purchased previously with the intent to donate we've asked is this something that people are looking to donate which if you're saying they're looking to donate it does alleviate some of the am i incorrect in saying that was the intent of making that purchase always that it would be preserved recreational use such as a path ok but it's still you know adding another eleven million dollars that's off spec which according to the town of bedford when you last back to town has to eat that not the state when they talk about the state funding and what's happening when you adjust to off spec items the towns have to and that is the that is the answer as i mentioned we are trying to get from the state and focus r so if the path is right along it or there's a possibility for it to switch and i was and are we running along the belmont susan's form to that point and then we come on my school property if that happens then this is the route of the path it's not off spec or off pa h if we are all the way on concord i believe that question becomes a little more relevant of are there still going to be willingness to fund that is part of this project if we're down on concord avenue right so  on camera people understand that the revised implications of the different there's a misconception with people in the perception is someone else is going to pay for this the state does not pay we can we went to the town of bedford eleven we know of somewhere around eleven hundred a square foot of something they charge somewhere around one hundred thousand dollars so every one of those avenues that are off spec cost more to the town and we just want to make sure the people that are saying we can do this we can do this and that is all i'm listening to that will be presenting end of january into february we're going to come back with the dollars that we've put to all these alternatives and different avenues for funding that we're looking out for each of them ok i appreciate that yes so if we if we can go back to the questions thank you for your input yeah i'm on brighton you downgraded the safety of crossing at brighton because you'd be crossing the tracks in the road at the same time but what if the path came out of hidden and then you cross brighton and then later cross the tracks if you cross a bridge in it's better than crossing both at the same time but you still have to cross both to make your ultimate connection you have to cross the room you have to cross that open if you're bright an intersection is dangerous for cars today so a light there would be a good idea regardless of the path i agree but so if it was signalled like then are yes so when we put in all of our treatments and we're done and at signalized we think it has a better ability but there's still disruption to the path and everybody stopping there you have to wait for trains if they're there you have to wait for cars if we're grade grade however that requires an eight percent run then a level area then an eight percent run that may be a little less appealing from a biking perspective walking you may not mind but biking now you've got those jobs so if we switched to five percent grade instead of eight percent they would run about fifty feet farther in each direction but we could put in a five percent running grade which most elevated options yes i mean i know you said it was a complaint but i'm imagining a little kid biking on even five percent seems pretty steep i'm trying to find a good example five percent is not steep eight percent you'll feel a little five percent is a pretty clean that is probably so it's a rise of eight feet over one hundred foot run if you just do the math out so for every hundred feet you go out so if from kathleen the team was fifty feet it's probably not even one hundred feet to the door so probably about an eight percent run is what that would be five percent would be almost half of that i mean the on road options are deeply unattractive to me but when you factor in the cost and the complexity of the ra know crossing the road there with the signal didn't seem too bad and that did i believe i did rise to the top rate right now who i got all the way out of my power point right now the at grade crossing was better the south to north was the next in the north to north with the longer structure even though it's not quite as high was that was the lowest option there and that's all i got thanks thank  the amount of length it needs to rise to get to that sixteen foot elevation it comes all the way from brighton street to the french omonia building or it has there was like a fifteen foot area where we'd have to come past the building snake over and then start to climb because the wolf ignace of the structure itself takes us a little bit closer to the rail so to stay we would end up going outside of the easement that's currently on that property we  there's an existing he's been in the process property and in order to fit the appropriate with a bridge you wouldn't be able to fit it we would need to meander off it in then start to rise in order to get up to the elevation needed before we hit brighton street  so it's excusing because the other one which seems the other bridge seems so much shorter and i try to figure out what i'm trying to fit in my head why that doesn't it's because of that pinch so we need to do our rising west of that building sneak past in that on the east end with  like just taking the roads that we have and not actually building a path missing a thing like you know it's going to be actually safer and better it's not the road where you have now we would narrow the roadway a little which would add a little bit of traffic calming there we would have a sixteen foot with for our space which is our recommended fourteen it's actually a little bit wider so you have the with but you are adjacent to the roadway in that area and prospects for it doesn't surprise you doesn't feel like it has a lot of room to sort of put a large thing like is never nearly as much existing free free right insurance as what you had i'm sorry in st was we maintain the five foot sidewalk on the western side we keep it's three foot strip that's there now the gresh trip but then we narrow the road there were currently really thirteen fault lines plus shoulders in brighton is about thirteen foot wide lanes plus shoulders but a two way road doesn't need that much we could have eleven fillings with one foot offset so we gain  six feet from the street we gained six feet from the street and we gave it to a sidewalk so we took a twelve a six foot sidewalk reduced a little bit of a buffer that's there now and put our fourteen foot wide area and  this may just become a future option you could put a sidewalk on the west side that doesn't exist continuously there now as part of a safe routes to school option that makes the connection from the elementary school to the high school i see is that some other separately funded program people would likely be driving to in writing we tend think that that may happen more with people outside the community trying to ride through so on the western end we have an area where people can park where they can get on this and then ride to a wife on the eastern  can park if they're coming from the east and want to head west through town most of the areas within town are not too far that we're thinking if you're already on a bike maybe you're making a neighborhood connection the workshop analysis in the questionnaire online had ninety two percent of respondents say they don't need parking along the path in order to utilize it so we're going off of that in part as well to say that the residents of the town don't feel they need parking to utilize the path so we think a lot of the park may start to come from outside neighborhoods so we are looking at are there areas where we can identify as parking space whether it's you know temporary hours or or whatever it when you didn't talk about it during the presentation about having the path actually cross at alexander but that those are options there is so still being considered i got yes yes and so i tried to identify within the different options for the underpass there if we had to be on the north side if we could be on the north or the south if we so the third option where we just showed it running very straight like the underpass from alexander to the high school really only works if we're far enough south on the high school property that we can meander and make that run or conquered if we are right along the south side of the rail or right along the north side of the rail there's not really room to do that you would have to come under at either the depressed approach that we were showing or you start along the rail and then you know curve out along the high school property so maybe you're not running through it but you sneak out into it to make that direct crossing so we are looking at can you go from north to south can you go from south to north similar to what we did with the connections in the western in the central area possible the complicated so you've heard nothing about this job is complicated  earlier you were talking about the option of going behind the buildings on concrete of the thing i remember from from the walk is that the post office is basically right on the train train tracks i'm trying to figure out how that would possibly work so it when you are down there it looks very close the post office building if i'm remembering correctly is actually about thirty three feet off the rail so when we need at least a fifteen foot offset in an eight foot path the buildings need to be at least twenty three feet from the rail for us to be able to fit our path there there is more of an offset to the post office building than there is to the bank on the north side i know when we were out there on the street it looks very close and so i want everyone to think about that and we've taken into consideration when we thought about our user experience and our sense of comfort it fits there but you are level with the rail and you're only fifteen feet away from it so it is a somewhat confined space but it does  really want to ask which is if you're considering the pollution for the bicyclists who are sort of riding in basically having to drive through the exhaust of the cars as they're on on a on a on a street instead of on a stand off plays into the user experience that will fall under the sense and comfort we talked a lot about that at the last meeting if we go on tour the downtown underpass yes now we've widen the twenty feet but you're still hearing the noise from concord avenue you're still smelling the exhaust from concord avenue so that plays into the comfort level in the experience of the writer and my last question is realistically what kind of timeframe are we talking about for building this path like what's the most optimistic scenario and what would be the real way for the exterior of that kind of thing i were talking i'm not going to mention the worst case scenario but we think if this continues to move forward politically design final design construction you're probably looking at about five years five years from today there might be a bike path were it's a good chance that i might make and i'm hoping that i will survive my current commute going on brighton street for the next five years and not get hit by a car that intervening time hopefully i'll survive the free for all for another five years shoveling monitoring map that the town has which we looked at as a group with safe routes members from each town to see where are those connection points and we learned you know many of the sidewalks are being covered in monitored and were and they generally follow the the traffic routes but not always and there were several routes connecting across schools that needed monitoring as well and so those were added and i think that would be a good resource how does it connect with the businesses there because it seems like a bypass to those businesses to me so if we are on the north side we come off of the belmont citizens farm property we enter the french mony property we have to rise up before we get to their building we come over and that's why we're looking at building this bypass so the existing path would still meet right in street where it is today so if you are if this is the alternative chosen yes we go over brighton street we don't make a direct connection to break in street or anything on it you either go down the alexander of passin by the high school or you come down here and then kind of double back so there is a little bit of bypass too that if we're on the south side as i mentioned this could come from the high school property or it could come from underwood in the hit injure area that intersection and up so that hit injure still makes the connection to break in as this comes over from the side on the north there would still be this at grade path where the path meets for him now so we feel like from the north this has some connectivity and from the south this has some connectivity so this crossing we are aiming higher with connectivity to different elements around it than the one that runs north to north and has a little bit more of a bypass so if you are making a day of it and you go out on your bike and you want to visit the shops there to get from one side of the street to the other if you are not comfortable and there's not a reasonable grade crossing you're going back around and across and then back down to get to the other side of the street correct if you're into that yes so you double this area which is i mean that is the primary reason i don't put it on a center because of this difficulty several blocks to get to the other side michael i just i just want to repeat yankee seven here we go this is about three hundred feet so if you did this and then circle back it's about six hundred feet total so my other question has to do with safety and when you're talking about issues of safety it seems like there's two different areas of concern and i just want to hear a little more from you on that because from what i think about safety in th collision and so but i know there's another idea of safety which has to do with you know being assaulted basically in a remote area right so can you tell a little bit more how you're waiting those and thinking about them so we originally had was if you were in a remote location that doesn't have much visibility that the police have a harder time to get to the isn't is easily accessible from a fire and emergency response perspective we were ranking that the lot with if you were on the path that wasn't on a road but you were close to a road we were arranging that somewhere in between so kind of like the concord av option that we're looking at you are not on conquered have you're not a sidewalk but you're close to it you have proximity that you have crossings with it we're go wants those crossings but there are still conflict points so we put that in the middle and then if you don't have a remote location and you don't have all of those interactions we rank that the highest sounds like a lot of people are starting to feel like what we had is a one in a two should both be equal that being in a remote location is as unsafe or as ill of an experience as those conflicts if they are under a certain extent or number of conflicts do you take that into the context of actual data and terms of reports or is that just measured by feedback so it's actually two things are going on here one it's our past experience it's data that we're familiar with things like that but i think more importantly amy showed a slide that had a long list from the matrix it had forty five things on it and then you saw just five things on it and these five things are now really really important and we're talking a lot about should be one should be two when in fact when we go to apply the matrix to each of the alternatives we will be using that long list the short list was to start this conversation we had a slide about it it's just a starting point so that we can start to hear exactly the feedback that we're getting this is a little more important this is not but in fact both of those two things are separate items on the long list and they're not and and or they're actually two separate things when we expand the list so they're not in competition with each other part of the as i mentioned was the input that we've received from the fire and safety and part of it is just well known knowledge from cyclists all over the place about being alongside the road and having crossings and so it's a combination i guess for me when i look at a bridge enclosure like that i put it in a whole different category of seclusion and and unsafe ness different from a grade secluded area i don't really see a lot of the past proposed in any of these areas particularly secluded except maybe through the woods on the new town but but i'm glad to hear that agreed my other question is you know we have made a commitment to support the  we have two commuter rail stations in town and one point i think that's no longer an issue there was concern that they would be shut down and consolidated so i'm certainly you would love to see this support those things and i know there's been some question about parking and i just would like to say i don't expect the path to resolve all the parking issues they may or may not arise i totally get it where in a neighborhood where commuters park and ride the bus or ride the train and so it's certainly a factor but i do think it's on the town to address that for many years people have wanted to see permit parking but it's been off the table and maybe it's time to look at that again  my last question is about congress avenue because i certainly see these improved crossings unconquered as a real improvement it's an area i would certainly avoid with a youngster on a bicycle in general just learning to to how to walk on the street and pay attention because they have to look in multiple directions so my question for conquered in those improved potential improvements is are we still looking at parallel parking on the street and you know it when you get into that then are you looking at the highest level of this ability in relation to those parking spots with the access points to those businesses so i'll try to point out two things that help answer that question so what kathleen was showing here where the park is on the north side that is based on what we originally center for what is needed for vehicular space on the south and that ties into this typical so we have on street parking we have our travel lane are traveling in more on street parking so are we are continuing to run parallel on tree parking along both the north and south side of the vehicular space but we are proposing to take out a couple of those spaces for what we call bump out so in any area where the path is going to cross is kathleen showing here you eliminate two or three spaces to make your sidewalks come out to make that crossing as narrow as possible you increase your visibility of your pedestrians or your cyclists who are trying to make that movement and they are only crossing a twenty two foot section you cross between the traveling your back on the sidewalk or refugee area on the other side so that is what we would be proposing any area where there is a crossing we also think that were we want to focus on minimizing the number of crossings thing that looks great and i do support that but i have seen these kinds of proposals with those little things that you think are a little like bump outs get taken out of plans we had bump outs on costello things you know they functioned and they got removed with this recent renovation and though there are a lot of improvements we've already had one person hit in a crosswalk so you know i caution us to thinking that we're always going to have the plan the way it is it doesn't always happen in practice thank you thank you  first of all thank you for all your work on this obviously huge task for you and i can see you're looking into every thank you the first one to comment as you talked about as a mother with children thinking about safety issues and the remoteness one is one i wanted to speak to because i can see like the lone tree hill is one type of remoteness behind houses is a different type of remoteness to me and i see it much safer for my children to be on a long stretch of a road that's not going to have things coming in and out like an active driveway versus the safety of what you're proposing there so i would rank the safety of a long stretch of a path much higher the other one was if you can pull up the matrix where it had the top choices all for that one when you're talking about relative cost is that taken into consideration which ones would then be possibly funded by state and not by so we started a couple ash tricks to things so those are ones where like i said if we are on the high school property is that partially be funded by the m s b a project if we are on concord ave does that make the tunnel a separate cost than what the path is costing for anywhere that we have the path option so far if it's going to be paved whether it's green pavement or regular pavement that you see in your street if it's paved if it's inappropriate with then it is eligible for at least some stay in d c our funding we have to look at the overall cost and what funding availability there is there to determine what percentage may fall to the town so right now before we put any hard numbers to anything our relative cost as i said was just looking at things majority really from a structural perspective to say this is a large bridge structure this is a tunnel this has like when we were in the wooded area we didn't have any overpasses or underpasses but the path itself had to be retained on a fourteen foot wall for over a mile that is a large cost so when we're looking at relative cost it's really just this will be more expensive than this which will be mark's answer than this for these reasons and we'll get into the detail numbers of the different dollars as we get into the very beginning of next year is it possible to say generally speaking if something is concrete ave for example as long as it's wide enough that it could be considered a path for funding outside about a month the same as the off road option that's behind that and you know yes ok well you said the only the cross section where i was showing conquered have limited to the thirty eight feature  this picture here right there so i'm just curious as far as that when what they're rendering there it's taking out the island that's currently there in concord ave yes and so as far as traffic safety is there any concern there with not having some sort of divider there but the division will still be there so in the bottom section what you see we've basically just shifted it four feet to the north i mean the vision between the two lanes of traffic oh i know i see you mean generally having traffic a decent two itself is a traffic calming measure because you are looking at people people will tend to go faster if they are in their own little tunnel then if they are adjacent to something opposing them what we're recommending is a love and foot lanes that is typical of any where area there isn't a highway local road to go as narrow as ten foot lanes highways are usually twelve and the roads in between which the falls into a lebanon is your typical recommended lanes that are out there right now are wide which if anything can encourage people to go faster than they should be for the characteristic of the roadway and then the last thing i wanted to comment on was the connectivity when they're talking about kind of connectivity when i answered the survey i was thinking more in terms of connecting waltham path to cambridge path ok and also the belmont center as a main hub where like when they talked about the path being a place that people could jump off go right meals and then get back on when i think about connecting within the community you hope that there's also the sidewalks as somebody else had mentioned there's already paths and it just seems like a glorified sidewalk versus a path as a recreation aspect thank you you thank  yes there needs to be a solid separation between the rail in the path if we're at a fifteen foot offset to get there and and that's because of that's because right now they currently operate that line is a commuter rail but it used to be freight and they said that there's nothing for hitting them from going back to that so they're free vehicles can have apparatus that hanging off of it they just want to make sure that anything that's running alongside their path has enough protection from what they currently have  operation and what they may use as operational along that rail line right but you don't plan to put in the hall the wall the whole length say that's or whether it's fifteen feet or twenty three feet the speed of the trains and anybody who lives on channing row can tell you the debris that kicks kicked up by the trains i don't see eight feet making a difference so i would think that you would put that well on the whole length and that's a cost factor that has to be included so we weren't looking at walls the whole length but anywhere where we're more than the fifteen foot offset we're looking at fencing and landscaping so there would still be elements there that would separate the rail space from the path space the solid wall has only been considered to this point as you mentioned largely from a cost perspective the cost of putting a wall for the whole two mile length of this would be excessive so we are looking at and  s all stems back to the very first presentation we gave their recommendations are solid barrier if you're fifteen feet off at least a fence if you're twenty five feet off all right second when you asked for input on your rankings and you had impact to private properties and you had the north side i think is a two i think everybody enchanting road would say that would be a lower number it's you know just because you're not taking the property there's the visual the sound pushed into january february there are subcategories to this that that is covered that is one of the elements on the full forty five scale list as far as still more to management we are going to have that challenge with the path no matter where it goes kind of similar to lighting it's one of those things where we are looking at this amount of paved space this amount of runoff and we need to handle it but what i'm saying is i don't see how the the north side ranks higher than the south side as far as property impacts  less property impacts on the north side than on the south side the reason we put that is because on the north side this is entirely on m bta and belmont citizens form land so land that is not privately owned well that the most ism's form is somewhat privately owned b has been designated as space that can be utilized for this path if we are on the high school property that is a privately owned property that we now have to get some kind of easement agreement access so there is  that is the differential that's here right now just looking at that from that perspective and also i'm saying is that you can still have him take from a property yes i am not actually physically taking it i think the impacts from the residents along there are actually just as significant as actually physically taking the property the enjoyment and use of the property is would be gone that's us and as we continue to expand that is incorporate and in on that text you know lighting was mentioned earlier and has nothing to do with you guys but over the years this whole process we're all led to believe that it wouldn't be because it was d c i property up there there would be a dawn to dusk issue and you talked about lighting today where you can get and i've been blind and worse than a car head like by bikers with those led lights extremely bright and to say that they'd be back there at night not knowing that if the town lights it but they have bikers going back there and lighting it is just you know i don't think anyone's realized that that was going to be a proposal that people would be back there at night and i always saw conquered ever the south side as twenty you know into the night whereas north side wasn't ok so from an operational maintenance i appreciate your comments about the effect of properties we are considering that now only in the stretch but throughout the entire length of the path because this isn't the only community goes through we are also going by others and we're trying to continue to wait things equally as we move all the way through town and lastly really quick i'm fine with you talked about packing excess management of conquered have and even going under the bridge sorry i don't  south side of concord have and you you have an overpass from brighton straight you could easily put an overpass from the train station to the south side of concord have and that would be another alternative but i think what you proposed is fine but it should be an impediment when you have the other ok and then it is less driveways is what i'm saying on that site on the south side there are yeah on the south side there are less after the ball fields than on the north to the west of the ball field just to go back to real quick the lady or someone before me had mentioned about whether the comfort and security versus the intersections versus people it is an issue not everyone always sees it i think when we were in road resident and i want to put a very positive spin on this by making the comment that i really appreciate the presentation that you've done on the concord to have option i think you put a lot of work into that and i'm very very encouraged and i thank you for it secondly i just want to mention i do have one channing road and i'm on the north side of the tracks there and i went to the walkabout that they have a few weeks ago where i guess you folks and we got up to the train station in belmont center but unfortunately were not able to walk along the tracks for some other reasons i guess you need special training or higher fences but anyway i'm fortunate to have some beautiful old mature trees in my backyard oaks maples you name it  are really the only buffer that me and my neighbors have for all of the noise and light pollution that has grown as the fields and playing fields have expanded over the last i just a couple of questions on again i'm going to go back to the discussion on the underpass at alexander just some thoughts i had around traffic and you said you were going to do traffic patterns and there's a concern from the residents a valid concern around would that underpass encourage more traffic i'm wondering you know through your traffic analysis particularly the bridge at belmont center which is a bottleneck in the mornings but also on the back side of w brooke heading out of sherman on to brighton it becomes a bottleneck and the majority i bike there to get to the el wife every morning during the time that high schoolers are going to school exactly the same time and i notice a lot of traffic  brighton street crosses brighton turns up hidden sure to go to the high school so i'm i'm wondering is there actually a potential benefit to this underpass for those other areas where the traffic out of when broke won't be as grace to the high school or even the middle school if there's this if there's an underpass that's going to offset the need to drive around if you know what i'm trying to say so i see that you can think you're adding a third connection with there are only two today so right now all of your traffic is split to the east in the west along your two busiest routes through town right there was concern that you're going to have people dropping off there i do think that may happen regardless of what the underpass looks like i think is soon as you make that connection it's the people that live in that neighborhood try you're going to want to make that most direct move if you already live right on brighton street probably doesn't make sense for you to go to alexander to get to high school when you're already there so i do think it's going to take your traffic and give it a third distribution point but it may become more walkers and bikers and less vehicles and closer right now nobody is walking in biking their kids over to the downtown underpass and the brighton street area to get to the high school i think majority of lead people are driving and you may be encouraging more work walking and biking right almost any increase in traffic won't be all vehicles through that neighborhood but that also then would give a here but were did you say you were potentially looking at a south side of the tracks route that would cross to the north side of the track using the alexander doll xander and vice versa ok so once we get farther in the matrix we're looking at all those connection points and all the in between running points to say is this a point where we continue to go on the same side we're already at or does it become a transition point so yes south to north or north to south with the crossing ok thank you you thank and man i used to live in arlington twenty years ago before i moved to belmont and just briefly what i'd like to say that channing referred to in says that i understand there was a lot of resistance to the minute man bike path when it was coming in by the a butters they didn't want to they were convinced there was going to be drug deals and murders and sex bad things happening but i would encourage you all to speak now to the people that abut the pa just to see what their experiences is and whether or not their fears are founded i sell real estate and the property values increased dramatically there were along the bike path because of the convenience thanks by that is one of the hot topics are december seventh meeting thank you for as jeffrey mentioned will be hanging out a little bit starting to pack up and just decompressing our thoughts so if anybody still has questions feel free to approach us